Men Are Sabotaging Partners' Birth Control to Get Them Pregnant

by Joanne Van Zuidam on January 29, 2015

Joanne Van Zuidam

About the Author

Joanne Van Zuidam writes about all things parenting — from getting your pre-baby body back to getting the kids back to school. She strives to practice what she preaches with her own daughter. Her work has appeared in <em>Better Homes and Gardens</em>, <em>ShopSmart</em>, <em>First for Women</em>, and <em>Family Circle</em>.

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Summary: You remember the one about the woman who gets intentionally pregnant to "trap" her man? This study found the reverse is more common than you'd think — men poking holes in condoms, popping out the active pills in a birth control pack, or taking their partner's money so she can't buy contraception. ACOG has issued recommendations to ob-gyns to screen and help advise patients who have experienced this.

It's called "reproductive coercion" and new research suggests that it's not just affecting young women in abusive relationships.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the behavior includes attempts to impregnate a partner against her will, control outcomes of the pregnancy, coerce a partner to have unprotected sex, and interfere with contraceptive methods.

The research, presented at the annual Clinical Meeting of ACOG, found about 16 percent of women — for all walks of life — have experienced the behavior.

"What is striking is that reproductive coercion affected women of all socioeconomic levels and educational backgrounds," said lead investigator Lindsey E. Clark, MD. "Reproductive coercion doesn't just affect poor and uneducated women."

She and her colleagues at Brown University's Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I., surveyed 641 women between the ages of 18 and 41 during routine ob-gyn care from January to May 2012.

The anonymous surveys included questions about men disposing of contraceptive pills, poking holes in condoms, and threatening a woman that, if she didn't become pregnant, he would leave her or impregnate another woman.

Results showed that 16 percent of the women had experienced partners tampering with their birth control in current or past relationships. Of those women, 32 percent suffered intimate partner violence, which involves physical, sexual, or psychological abuse.

"Having a woman say, 'My partner's not hurting me or hitting me' doesn't mean he's not trying to get her pregnant against her will," Rebecca Levenson of Futures Without Violence, which helps educate doctors about the unique form of abuse, told the Daily News.

"We've had people say, 'He pulled my IUD out, or he took my money so I can't buy birth control,' everything you can imagine," she said, citing patients whose partners have lied about using condoms or popped out all the active pills in a birth control pack. "It's a real part of people's stories."

In January, ACOG issued recommendations to ob-gyns to screen and help advise patients who have been or may experience reproductive and sexual coercion.

According to Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, senior investigator on the study, one aim of this research is to encourage physicians to screen and identify the large number of patients experiencing reproductive coercion so that these women can be offered forms of birth control that are less easily sabotaged, such as the IUD and the injectable.

In the case of an IUD, the ob-gyn can cut the strings off in the cervical canal, said Levenson. "Because people have actually had their IUDs pulled out. If this is what is happening, birth control intervention looks a lot different. Providers are really the only ones who can fix this."

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